Art from Austrqliq

EIGHT CONTEMPORARY VIEWS

MICKY ALLAN

IOHN DAVIS

i, RICHARD DUNN

I ANNE FERRAN

FIONA HALL

IMANTS TILLERS

CAROLINE WILLIAMS

IOHN YOUNG

Curator: Alison Carroll

Exhibition touring to Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila,

Kuala Lumpur and Singapore: 1990-1991

Australian Exhibitions Touring Agency, 1990 Messoge from the Prime Minister

I am delighted that this exhibition, Art from : Eight contemporary views, is to visit Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, Kuala Lumpur and singapore in 1990-91. It will be the first major exhibition of to visit South East Asia for many years.

I believe very strongly that Australia and our South East Asian neighbours have an enormous amount to share with each other. This exhibition will give a strong indication of contemporary Australian artistic currents and concerns. At the same time, it will demonstrate the depth of Australia's interest in developing contacts with and learning more about the rich and vivid contemporary cultures of our neighbours.

I congratulate westpac Banking corporation on sponsoring the exhibition, and the Australia council and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on supporting it.

It is my strong hope that Art from Australia will prove to be the first of many new ventures exchanging art and artists between Australia and South East Asia.

R J L Hawke

3 Art f rom Austrolio

.' . : J economic rules of Adam Smith, and the artistic rules of ^ fi,:li"',1:;"T1,::T,Tffi*,"", Reynolds c A R R o L L loshua were a central and accepted part of the Dreamingoftensofthousandsof new Australian heritage. Unlike South East Asia they years; and the very short two didn't meet serious conflict from the other, different centuries, since 1788, of European settlement, a mere mode of the locally-born people. The act of transporting speck in time. The Aboriginal history has continued its these sociai rules was however, important, and the new path (diminished for a time, but now re-emerging with land itself enforced new attitudes. Gradualiy a different great vigour), and no doubt will go on into the future as history built up with different peoples mixing, living one of the various strands in the cultural mix of current and affecting social and emotional responses. day Australia. One important emotional link that Australian artists The 200 year period of white settlement however, have with most of South East Asia is the experience of while short by (certainly some standards in numbers of colonialism. The distance of white Australia from years) has been iong in other ways. A different seed in Britain has always been palpable - not only physically new ground often has to struggie and mutate to survive but aiso, importantly, socially. Australia was the and grow; from many points of view the period of Antipodes, 'the coionies' and being sent there had the European settlement in Australia has been one of assumption of, at worst, wrong doing (shades of the dynamic adaptation and change. penal past) and, at best, making a new start after There is indeed a comparison with many of the disasters at 'home'. In the arts for the last lS0 years modern cities of South East Asia, like Singapore, or (certainly until the Second World War) the attitude Kuala Lumpur, which have had a similar, remained that Australians would be accepted if chronologicaily short, life. Even Bangkok, Manila and approvai was given from Britain. ]akarta are 'new' cities in terms of world history and The first 'nationalist' artists, like Tom Roberts of the come well within the framework of the founding of Heidelberg School of the 1BB0s, travelled to Britain and Sydney, Hobart, , Brisbane, Adelaide and Europe to learn and digest cunent European forms. In the same way luan Luna and Raden Saleh travelled to Spain and the Netheriands, and wider Europe, to iearn and gain favour. In all cases - Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries - the long road in the.arts to understand and move on from colonialist backgrounds is a fascinating, and in some ways continuing, process. The 'story' of art in Australia over the last 200 years has some major patterns, the outlines of which can be sketched in here. Parallels and comparisons with South East Asia are brought in, both because ofthe audience Fig. 1: Ludwig Becker 180g?-61, Border of the Mud Desert near Desolation Camp,786t, for this book, and because it is illuminating generally. Watercolour on paper, 14 x 22.8 cms. Colti Latiobe Librny, State Library ofVicroria. There are many books on Australian art in its various Perth, the major Australian cities, and they share an aspects available to fill out the picture more ability to accept and move with change. specifically. Australia has been different because the ,new, race of people, the Europeans, became and remained It seems surprising now that so little attention was paid dominant in their new land.' The original heritage of to Australia by Europeans in the seventeenth and early white Australia was from England, Scotland, Ireland eighteenth centuries, when there was so much and Wales, then joined by various other Europeans. The European activity (of expiorers, traders, missionaries,

6 ARTFROIAAUsIRALIA

, ::) et al.) in the waters to the north. The Dutch to show interested investors, new settlers, and families , . i the barren western coast in the seventeenth the sights and possibilities of the new land. George ---'. but left it well alone and it was only in the late French Angas' South Australia Illustrated of 1844-45 is . ".-rth century (in 1770) that the English captain a good example, made some eight years after Adelaide's - ... Cook sailed up the more Iush and inviting founding. Raffles' illustrations to his history of lava are .- .-:- coast of the continent. Australians are raised on a similar undertaking. .- ,:res of Captain Cook and the difficulties of his The literal artistic relationship between 'Australia' -.-,='... and of the strange people, animals and plants and Asia began with little emotional significance: it .- --. :ound. We are not told of his next port of cail in was all 'possibilities'. It was only after white settlement ..,.rds just to the north, into the vibrant, in Australia and identification with the new land that

- 'differences' to be asserted with Asia and with -. -.olitan city of Batavia, where every race of began : ,. :ould be seen and all manner of desirable items Europe and with other European-dominated cultures - :: purchased. elsewhere in the colonial world. ,^--s period however the relationship between In Australia the relationship with Europe was

-: - :.ia' and 'Asia', from the European complicated. Sensitive to convict or impoverished origins, Australians =: trader's point of view, was very much based :. .,:icalities: what was possible to be traded, for wanted to distance =-:ch profit, and at what price (in terms of themselves from their . --:\' in reaching it, and with regard to one's own recent past, or that :a -:.:r rivals). The artists on board the ships had a of newly arrived people '4 . -: :ask where ever they were: to document the in similar difficult , . . ::ople and products they saw for initial and circumstances. It is the same today when -, .::dr'. Botanical specimens were noted, the I ; .rhies drawn, and people scrutinised. Of course, new waves of i . ::?n of the age, certain preconceptions were immigrants receive the I example, poorest treatment lrom , r-::i: the notion of the'noble savage'for , '- . i:sire to turn a 'documentary' scene into a more Ihe nearesl previous . - .-.,.d Landscape 'view'. But the same artists who group. So social and Fig. 2: Thomas Griffiths Wainmight, 1794-1a47 The Cutmear Twins, and Lucy. c. 1840, success fane ' .--..stralia, like William Westall who travelled financial Watercolour. pencil on paper,32 x 30 cms '.. l.i.^:thew Flinders on the lnvesfigofor in 1801, became very important - --o draw other places of interest for a European and one way to demonstrate this was to commission -:,:.: in Westall's case in and India and then artists to show either the material success of the patron ... r=rra and the West Indies. or the merits of the environment to both local and -. same documentary, to a degree ethnographic, audiences at 'home'. Such images also were needed to the new houses built in the cities. Portraits of - -: continued in Australia with the inland furnish : -:^s: taking artists or doing sketches themselves of great delicacy were made, for example by T.G. . . '..-ervs, products, terrains, as well as making the Wainwright (fig. z), as well as grander-scale oils of the .-.:lal emotionally charged image of the experience 'gentry' arranged in the style of Reynolds, or his . , , -,ring Australia's very hostiie deserts. Ludwig follower Thomas Lawrence. Views of new houses were : .. .- . images made on the ill-fated exploration of painted, in oil and watercolour and with varying - .r: and Wills through central Australia in the degrees of sophistication, often showing the new . -:e tvpical of the best of'explorer' art. In the facade, the garden, and the sweep of land associated ... ri the Mud Desert, the trail of camels carrying with it, either the view down to Sydney Harbour, or the ' little dogs, ' '.',.:-orers seems to disappear into atmospheric landholding in the country. Still-lives, with prize . -:-.' [fig. r). or fruit, or even fish, were painted, and, later on, -...--rher, related artistic tradition was the animals - in the tradition of George Stubbs - were ,:renting ofboth the new landscape and its depicted to add splendour to Georgian and then , -:s. as well as the new life of the settlers, and Victorian drawing rooms and studies. In the early days :. .--.ting these scenes into engraved and lithographed the artists were almost always convicts, often .... to be distributed both in Australia and in Europe, transported for forgery - Iike Wainwright - and well-

7 ARTFROMAU5IRALIA

skilled. Later, trained artists came for other reasons - huge skies, brooding mountains and fern forests, dry Eugbne von Gu6rard for example came to dig for gold - and empty deserts, rocky shorelines and caves. and turned to creating images to make a living. All were potentially dangerous to the new settler This artistic output was provided, too, for the and were depicted with respect, even awe. Romantic colonists of South East Asia and will be familiar. The Iandscape painting was the European tradition in vogue Dutch East India Company brought many artists to Java at the time, but even this does not account for the to depict the dominance of the tradition in Australiu.' The popular notable people stories of the period - in both word and image _ were and places of of coping with the bush, of being lost or dying of thirst, interest. In the of hard times trylng to make a living as farmers or English-speaking loggers or drovers, or of even harder times trying to colonies, George make a living as explorers. Chinnery and his In contrast, the dominance in South East Asian disciples painted countries where European-influenced art had a strong similar portraits tradition - notably in the philippines - in the later i:"?:',IW:,::,""?"Hi;,0,i'#;T"':Y:yJii:I"-""'dscenes, nineteenth century was in depicting people and town Coll: Art Gallery ofWestern Ausbalia, Perth luminous with images. In the Philippines the church of course was a Itaiian inspired light, and grand in the Reynolds' major patron, but portraits of local dignitaries aiso were mould. Chinnery was notable for training Chinese of importance. In nineteenth century Indonesia Raden artists in his style and this tradition spread to Saleh's major works, with the exception of an image Singapore, for example, where scenes of the harbour Iike the Eruption of Mt Merapi, were of people. The and local European and Chinese grandees were strong interest now in South East Asia in depicting the produced.' landscape, especially the rich density of jungle forms Chinnery overtly trained Chinese followers. In South and colours, did not occur in these early pieces. East Asia, locally-born individuais like Raden Saleh The main event of mid nineteenth century Australia rose to eminence in this new European art. Images of was the discovery of gotd, especially in Victoria at life for Europeans in Bangkok in the nineteenth Ballarat and Bendigo. Men came from all around the century, painted in fresco, show related activity there; world, including tens of while in the Philippines, with centuries of Spanish thousands from China, to Catholic tradition, a large activity of painting in oil on dig for it. Some found it, canvas for the church and then for private individuals and spent it on both their was well established. own enjoyments, In ihe same way that the Catholic tradition including the purchase of dominated Filipino art in this period, so one aspect of art, and on their society. It visual interpretation in Australia was different from marked the beginning of other forms of expression in South East Asia. This was an in{rastructure for the the dominance of the imaginary landscape. arts: societies of artists, It has been pointed out that the art of nineteenth teaching institutions and century Latin America included little landscape art galleries. The colonies without people: that people and their stories were so Fig. 4: Frederick McCubbin 1855- were somewhat 1977, Lost, 1886. oit on can,as, rl important and dramatic that landscape seemed very ' competitive about /3.7 cms. cor, Nariona, o, u,",n.'l.u their insignificant.' Felion Bequest 1940 "ur".u In contrast the homogeneity of Australia artistic products and all settiers, and their dominance of the aborigines, meant fairly quickly established'National Galleries,, usually that part the that troubled them, the 'land', was on quite a grand scale. Art schools were set up in depicted again and again. It was shown large and small, relationship to these institutions and the closeness is in oil, watercolour and pencil, with one major still apparent in most State art hierarchies today. (A exponent being German born von Gu6rard, with images similar arrangement of course occurs in most South iike Mf William from Mt Dryden of r8sz, made of the East Asian countries, where the gallery or main Grampian Ranges in Victoria (fig. S). The nineteenth exhibiting space and art school are mutually supportive century was dominated by pictures of grasslands under and closely aligned.)

8 ART FROM AUSTRAIIA

days of droving sheep, as in Tom Roberts The Breakaway, or fantasies oftrials on the outer edges of the suburbs and nearby country-side, as in Frederick McCubbin's image of a child lost and alone (fig. 4). In 1901 the different colonies of Australia federated into a new nation, proclaimed with a new capital in Canberra. The art gradually, became more and more sophisticated. In the cities eiegant society arts of the salons and art schools flourished, supported in fashionable journals. Rupert Bunny's Shrimp Fisfiers of 1910 (fig. 5) shows a world relaxed and indulgent. It was a world where 'oriental' objects were brought in to decorate homes. Images abound of women Fig. 5: Rupert Bunny 1864-1947, Shrimp Fisllers fSaint Georges), relaxing in :1910, Oll on canvas,120.7 x 161.9 cms. Coll: National callery olVjctoda, fclion Bequest 1946 kimonos or Chinese brocades, with fans, brassware, From 1850 on, in Australia, artists depicted the gold screens and -rsh. selling cheap lithographs ofit here and abroad, furniture overtly of -ld then making images for people who made money Asian make.'As in -:- :he resulting boom. Landscapes again were popular, Europe, these . -: as the 'bush' became less threatening, the objects were highly ::dscapes, too, mellowed, with more emphasis on fashionable, though : ..-eter pictures of cattle grazing, or scenes of dusk. often they had been The cities grew and Australia's population became imported or brought ---:easingly urbanised. Increased wealth and stability back directly from ..-=ant vounger, locally born and trained artists started Asia where more , -:avel more. Information about art in Europe was and more Austr- Fig. 7: Russell Drysdale 1.S12-91., pub, ...::easingly available in books, art journals and alians travelled and Moody's 1941, Oil on panel, s0.8 x 61.6 cms. Coll: Nationat cailerv of .',-::ibitions. New ideas of the art world became not worked. Victoria, puchased 1942 --,-i more accessible but more desirable. Hence, in Photography became more aware of aesthetic trends, 1.1.-rourne four young men and their'accomplices' of with Max Dupain's work of the 1920s elegant and --= Heidelberg School' started to work with inventive. His Sunbaker of tg37 (fig. 6) is an image of -:.::esslonistic quick strokes of the brush, with a relaxed but potentially powerful, youthful well-being .::tened palette, and choosing often domestic, low-key on a Sydney beach. It has become a symbol of the - .res painted en plein air. 'Australian' in the same way that Oi course part of the changes Iater Russell Drysdale evoked the - - - -rqht by Impressionism lanky, isolated figures of outback .- .lch r'vas the influence on Australia in scenes like Moody's :,-,. irench artists of Japanese Pub of 1sa1_ (fig.7). ,'.-.-t-e prints, with iighter Printmaking, first wiih etching, - . urs, relaxed subjects, and and the Painter-Etcher societies, --::=:ent constructions of then with relief printing, using ;: . -e. This too was accepted by wood or linocuts, became widely ,,- -\ustralian artists, and was, practised. Margaret Preston was : - - -callv, the first major among the first to work with : : r,:rowledgement of Asian art aboriginal images in her -:-:-:. printmaking (fig, Fig, 6: Mu Dupain b, 1911, The Sunbaker,1937. and painting B). 'bush' celatin - le (the undomes- silver phoioBraph, 37.7 x 43.2 cms. ColIAustralian Narioilal callery, Canberra, She was also an eariy, original ', gift of the Philip Monis A.ts Grant 1982 .::d land) retreated even voice in Australian art to . ---:rer and writers and artists created a fiction of lost comment, in 1.942, that by the end of the Second World : -:: \ravs for the growing town audiences. The War 'Australia will find herself at the corner of a :-- ielberg artists were prominent in depicting the past triangle: the East, as represented by China, India and

9 ART FROIAAUSIRAI.IA

will be at one point, Japan, and the other will have the work merges Chinese calligraphic line, interest in United States of America representing the West,.u Aboriginal forms and a knowledge of the west. The War changed allegiences from Europe more to The 1950s heralded a new age: post war material America, and focusing on the Pacific. During War, the well-being, growth in the arts, interest in Australia as cut off from European trends, a group of artists called well as elsewhere in American art, which has endured. the Angry Penguins produced Abstract expressionism had many adherents, as in disturbing and vigorous South'East Asia, with other interests of, for example, images of life in Australia. hard-edge work part of this. There was also a self_ These included images of conscious search for'national identity, tapped urban life, country life, life in successfully (in that their images remain accepted as the streets, life among visions of our time and place) by two Melbourne artists families, and the John Brack, in for example his Collrns Street, E pm myth/symbols of the about dour realities of city life (and the rush to the train bushranger Ned Kelly, and home at the end of a working day) (fig. 10) and Fred later of the desert. Albert Williams' Iandscapes, with his different vision of the Tucker's Pick Up of t94t land: unpeopled, filtered and formalised (fig. 11). (fig' 9) Fig. B: Marsaret prestontszsY;ff? is his response to the The 1970s and 1g80s have been boom times for the Shoalhaven Gorge, NSW 1S53. changing morals of war-time visual arts Colou stencil on paper, ss.4 x 46.8 cms. in Australia. Interest has grown generally, Coll: Ausiralian National callery, Canbarra Melbourne. with now, a famous comparison that more people visit AII these aspects have too references in South East art than go to the football (which is an Asia. The impressionistic philippines idylls of the extraordinary event in sports-based Australian life). could be Australian school, if the palm is replaced by a Teaching institutions continue to grow and consolidate, eucalyptus. There is the same increasing confidence now part ofthe diverse university structure. In and diversity of Filipino painters in the early years of Melbourne there are six independent, Government the century. The eiegant life style of Singapore,s supported art schools, all offering degree courses with Chinese traders in this period, as depicted in the various departments. Art history and theory, which National of Singapore, could be the relaxed, began in universities after the War, now has thousands warm, rich life depicted by Rupert Bunny. The ofgraduates, helping to teach, act as critics for dramatic war years of the 1940s similarly saw a newspapers, or become production in Jogjakarta of vigorous images of real life involved in the museum in the streets, raw yet celebratory, very like that ofthe profession. Art Angry Penguins in Melbourne. magazines have also These are general trends, much simplified. Apart proliferated, with twelve from the Impressionist response Io ukiyo-e and the fact or so coming out of all of Asian objects and style being in domestic use in the the States, discussing early twentieth century, there has been Iittte general local issues and events acknowledgement of the arts of Asia, though some and theories. And individuals stand out from this. One was Margaret museums have Preston; another, an architect/designer W. Hardy developed, with State Wilson who brought Chinese forms into his work from Galleries solidifying, the the 1920s; and also Donald Friend, a painter and new Austraiian National draughtsman who lived first in Sri Lanka, in the 19b0s Gallery opening, and Fig. 9: Albert Tucker b. 1914, pick Up, and 1960s and then in Bali for many years. However regional galleries with 1941. Oit on composition board, 61.6 x 4s.5 cms. Coll: Australian Natjonal callery, Canbena the most important, although isolated, artist in professional staff Australia who brought Asian ideas and forms into his developing throughout the smaller towns. In New work was Ian Fairweather. Fairweather, Scots-born, had South Wales there are over twenty regional galleries, all studied lapanese and Chinese before he sailed for with collections, exhibition programmes and Shanghai in 1929. He lived and painted in China, the educational events. Philippines, Baii, Sri Lanka and India as well as, from Also in this period Australia has made a concerted L933, in Australia, where he finally settled in 1943. His effort to become more involved with international art

r0 ART FROT AUSTRAIIA

affairs' More and more exhibitions have travelled example, Geoff Lowe's response to :articularly the Vietnam war era, to Europe and America and more and more or others working with ideas pertaining to Asian Itists have had the opportunity of working overseas for religions, or the issues of ,orientalism,.' :eriods of time. The Australia Council has had a This is a general exhibition, about a range of art mportant part in this, setting activity in Australia. It sets a rp programmes and providing *:-::::l for tuture ,eeding money. exchanges of exhibitions, artists, visits and However, one of the other activities. It would not be .::terests of visual arts :ractice,forAustraliaandappropriate-tosendittoEurope SluthEastAsia,inorAmericabecause,ironically, more of our work is known there :elelopment of the visual arts and there is already a context for -. -.lrat as colonialism literally more thematically based :-lishes, it has remained exhibitions. '-:ongly embedded in more And certainlv the same is true .-rglasting ways. Both *1"11;1"'ll,","l""fi;,1,113;,""'"',',fi,".l,iljt,ipm,1e5s.oi,o"onBequestls56 of Australia: all the participating -1- rstralian and South East Asian art remains far flom artists are weil known, and 'centres' their work is available to be --: ofpractice, with only rare acceptance or seen in individual, and in issue-based group, =--

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